Stop Drinking and Start Living- The Feminine Way

Why You Should Stop Chasing Solutions

• Mary Wagstaff

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Calm isn’t just a mood—it’s the baseline your body must return to if you want to break free from the cycle of drinking. When you’re stuck in overwhelm—overthinking, overworking, and over-giving—your nervous system never resets. That constant stress is exactly what makes pouring a glass of wine at the end of the day feel so tempting.

Here’s the truth most sobriety methods miss: alcohol was never the problem. It was just your body’s quick fix for a frazzled nervous system. The deeper issue is self-abandonment—constantly outsourcing your energy, trying to hold everything together with willpower, and disconnecting from your feminine wisdom. That’s what fuels the decision fatigue, the mental load, and the endless responsibilities that make you want to check out.

The feminine way flips the script. Instead of piling on more rules, tools, and self-improvement hacks, what if you simply learned to generate calm from within? A few small shifts—like softening your breath, feeling the support of your back body, and asking, “How would my Calm Queen respond here?”—create the safety your brain has been chasing in a bottle.

✨ Key Takeaways from this episode:

  • Calm is your true superpower—it dissolves the urge to numb.
  • Alcohol is not the root problem—it’s a nervous system coping mechanism.
  • The feminine way isn’t about doing more, it’s about feeling safe enough to do less.
  • Simple daily practices can rewire your body to choose calm over craving.

When you feel safe in your own skin, you don’t need a drink to take the edge off—you have a the CALM codes with in you. 

👉 Ready to test this out in real life? Download my free guide “60 Seconds to Calm” in the show notes. It works faster than a drink—and it actually gives you your power back.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast and its contents are not a substitute for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. It is for educational and inspirational purposes. I am not a therapist or doctor. The views here are expressed a personal opinion and based on first hand experience. Please consult a doctor if your mental or physical health is at risk.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Stop Drinking and Start Living the Feminine Way. I'm your hostess, mary Wagstaff, holistic Alcohol Coach and Feminine Embodiment Guide, here to help you effortlessly release alcohol by reclaiming your feminine essence. Sobriety isn't just about quitting drinking. It's about removing the distortions that keep you disconnected, overwhelmed and stuck in cycles of numbing. Each week, I'll share powerful tools, new perspectives that transform, and deeply relatable stories to help you step into the power, pleasure and purpose that it is to be a woman. This is your next evolution of awakened empowerment. Welcome to the Feminine Way. I'm so glad you're here.

Speaker 1:

We are at the start of a beautiful series. We are going to be talking about reset to calm. Why calm I love saying that word. Say it 10 times fast Calm. Why calm is your superpower and why it feels so hard to keep.

Speaker 1:

So this is what I know about the incredible, amazing, beautiful women that I have had the pleasure and privilege of calling into my life. That includes you, if you are here. We are a frequency match. I say this all the time, but I believe it, and if you've been staying and this is resonating with you and the wonderful women that I have come into contact with that have stayed here in my new community is that we are always wanting to grow to do it better. The feminine is creative. She always knows that there's more to be had and this doesn't mean a lack of satisfaction, and in fact, most of the women I know are extremely grateful. They have so much gratitude they can really recognize and appreciate the abundance that is around them. But sometimes that can fall to the wayside or get overshadowed by the mental load that we hold.

Speaker 1:

So if you're here to support your alcohol consumption, I want you to know every single thing that I talk about on this podcast is what is the real problem to your over drinking, to the reason that you can't release alcohol, why alcohol is no longer working for you at this stage in your life. I can give you mocktail recipes. I could talk about life. I can give you mocktail recipes. I could talk about things to say to people, places not to go, but in the end, what I want you to come away with is thinking about the one problem in your life right now and how this applies. I want you to think about the place in your life where you are the least calm, where there's the most upset, where you keep coming back again and again, and alcohol is potentially a result of that.

Speaker 1:

Now I hear a lot of people say well, alcohol is just a habit and there's nothing else really wrong. And I really want to call BS on that, because if you were regulated, your nervous system was regulated, you knew how to manage your mind, you could see problems through the lens of shifting perspectives. Then you would be able to shift your habitual relationship with alcohol. There's always something to learn and chances are you just know that. So the woman who is doing all of the right things quote unquote right is you, is me, is all of us right. We're never just like screwing off on purpose into a state of apathy where we are overwhelmed and the only thing to do just seems to be to avoid it. And that could have something to do with the phase that you're in in your cycle, or you've just been trying and you keep hitting the same wall over and over and over again and you just say screw it.

Speaker 1:

What is consistent with every single woman that I've ever worked with, and probably with you as well, is you are seeking to educate yourself, and you're probably even educating yourself about other people. You are listening to podcasts, you are reading self-development books, you are going to the gym, are going to the gym, you are trying new classes, right, you are looking at healthy recipes for your family, but why is it not sticking? Why does it feel so hard when really all you want is peace and all you want is calm? Well, when you keep adding more to your plate, adding more to the pile, that creates even more mental overload, it creates more decision fatigue, it creates more responsibility of things that you have to juggle. And then you know you've promised yourself that you know you're not going to micromanage, that you're going to stay on your own paper, that you're going to stay on your own page. Let everyone in your life be a little bit sovereign, really work on yourself.

Speaker 1:

But then, because you're at this heightened experience and you're never really getting to calm, because you're trying so hard, when someone questions you or says, hey, it sounds like you're having a bad day, you snap. Or when you don't get the answer that you want, or you ask for help and someone's not doing it in the right way, right, you lose your cool, you lose your integrity. Now, we are human. This happens to everyone, including myself. Or you lean on having a drink, you go scrolling, you go check out so you sip, scroll or snap, right, this is like the three things that happen, or some version of that, and what's happening is that your nervous system doesn't feel safe Because if we look at, say, a scale of one to 10, of being, you know, in a triggered fight, flight or freeze moment of a nervous system response where our cortisol is pumping, we've been in a big transition. You, you know, you might snap, you might be at a 10 or over a 10, but you're never getting back to zero, you're never fully dysregulating, you're excuse me, you're never fully regulating. You're never really in that calm place and your body cannot fake safety.

Speaker 1:

And to be calm means to find safety, which is one of the precepts of the feminine way Containment, creating self-containment and safety for yourself and self-abandonment is the biggest issue with this overwhelm, this overdoing this over trying to fix it all. And typically this is a style of anxious attachment. And from my research about attachment styles and we'll talk more about them in a future episode is that what I've noticed and there are women that are avoidant attachment, but most of the women that have come to me are their insecure attachment style is anxious attachment. Now, what I want you to take in with all of this is you don't need to feel called out. This is just how we learn to be safe. This is how we learn to survive as babies, as children. So we have to be willing to look at oh shit, and there's a lot of really funny YouTube videos. I should put a link in the show notes. There's a couple of people on YouTube that are talking about attachment style and they act it out and it's just so spot on.

Speaker 1:

And if we can't laugh at the neuroses and the ridiculousness sometimes that it is to be human, then we're doing it wrong. So we can't take ourselves too seriously because these are the stereotypes. But they stereotypes exist for a reason, because they are real. We don't want to be defined by them, but we also need to be able to laugh at ourselves. We cannot take ourselves too seriously or none of this will work, even alcohol, even as destructive as it can be. I mean, I can look back and fortunately I'm safe and I know a lot of people aren't safe from alcohol.

Speaker 1:

But some of the things I did and thought when I thought I was crazy, sexy, cool are pretty hilarious, looking at my eyes rolled back in my head and my puffy face and barely you know, probably able to walk a straight line. And I've told the story about writing Matthew a love song for Christmas. That's for another episode. It was not sexy, right? So what's happening when we're going outside of ourselves all of the time to look for ways to be better essentially and I think that this is a lot of the conditioning, a lot of the time to look for ways to be better essentially and I think that this is a lot of the conditioning, a lot of the programming that comes from childhood, and I won't say society, because we are society, and when no one really feels that way, it's like who's even saying this anymore? Right, it's just these old conditioned beliefs. If you can tell me who quote unquote society is, I would love to know. A lot of it's marketing, a lot of it's old family values, a lot of it comes from religion, which is society. But I just hate that blanket term because most of the time it's just the thoughts that you are thinking about, the way you think other people think you should be, and when you act differently, it's like then you realize well, no one, a lot of people aren't buying into that. But because we keep saying society. The marketing feeds off of that. So the reason that women, I believe, are more interested in fixing their self, it really does come from more the way we are raised, which, again, is society.

Speaker 1:

But I think it's good to get really specific. Instead of this blanket term being better, do we need to prove our worth through action, through being the best version of ourselves, through being good, through helping out, being a good helper. I know I was praised, I loved it, I was a good helper, I was mommy's good helper, right. And you know, my partner on the other side of that completely rebelled against any and all authority and he now feels safer, like being alone, doing it alone. He has an avoidant attachment style. Again, we'll get into that later. But what's really happening when we're trying to be good and fix everything around us is we abandon ourselves. And when we abandon ourselves, we do not feel safe. And when we do not feel safe, we cannot be calm, because calmness is the prerequisite for creativity, for clarity and for consistency, and this is what I want to teach you about the feminine way.

Speaker 1:

This is what I want to teach you about your necessary reset to calm, because I will have a conversation with anyone who tells me I am as calm as a cucumber, but I still wanna have a drink. I do not buy that at all, because if you are calm and your nervous system is regulated and you feel so good, you aren't getting triggered. There's nothing that's bumping up against you. You have very little resistance in your life. We should have a conversation. So good, you aren't getting triggered. There's nothing that's bumping up against you. You have very little resistance in your life. We should have a conversation because, in my view and my experience, why would you need to drink that? Why would you even want to drink if you feel so good in your body?

Speaker 1:

So the first thing I want to talk to you about, with this idea of calm in this series, is that you can generate calm on your own right now, without anything needing to change. What I would love for you to do is lean back into the seat you're in. If you're walking, or if you're driving, make sure you keep your eyes open, but just lean back. If you're walking, just take a moment to stop, take a big breath in through your nose, exhale out through your mouth and I just want you to say the word calm, safe Calm is available to me right now. I am calm because I choose to be.

Speaker 1:

And your homework for the week or your inquiry for the week, when you go to try to do something new a download, another podcast, even a masterclass, a book, anything I want you to stop. And the only thing I want you to do for the week is to ask yourself every morning and write it down how did I create more calm today? And you want to decide that ahead of time. I'm calling myself the calm queen. How did I step into the title of the calm queen today? And one of the things that I wrote down was I don't wake up, I rise right, and then you can check back in with that all day.

Speaker 1:

Every day, because the practice of calm and settling into calm and asking yourself how does a calm queen respond to this all day, every day, is going to give us the foundation that you need to be able to look at your thoughts, to be able to look and examine your beliefs that aren't serving you, because that can be triggering alone, because they have created your identity, your breath, your own touch and the last thing. So it's going to be the three things relaxing, softening, breathing and just saying the word calm. It's a powerful word, asking yourself every morning how did I create calm today and deciding different than yesterday. And I've been doing this at the end of the night and asking how am I going to do it differently? Where was I not calm today and how will I do it differently tomorrow? And then I want you to have a conversation. Look at the world, lead, walk, drive, see your eyes through the back of your body.

Speaker 1:

I had a beautiful conversation with a client and she said I'm speaking from my feet. It's like how do I know that I'm present, as I'm speaking from my feet when I'm calm? So from the soles of your feet all the way up your back body, your heels, to the back of your head, and move your energy from there. This is going to be the containment of safety that you need to embody. This isn't just a mindset game, this isn't just an action game. This is a somatic experience. We experience the world through our senses, ladies, that is why this is a holistic practice.

Speaker 1:

So currently I am offering private one-on-one reset to calm sessions. The link is in the show notes. I would love to support you in practicing this, because you don't need help, because you've got it. You've got wisdom, you've got tools, but you do need support to navigate through all of the things to get crystal clear on the one thing that would make the biggest impact. I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon, hey?

Speaker 1:

So before go, I've got something for you that works faster than pouring a drink and it actually gives you your power back. It's called 60 seconds to calm, and inside I share six quick, in the moment phrases to help you end the mental tug of war, soothe any emotion or urge and come back to yourself without overthinking. So, whether your habit is wine scrolling or snapping, this is going to get you back in your body, and under a minute. And it's all free and it works. I also added, for being such an amazing listener to the show, a couple of surprise bonuses, so grab it right here with the link in the show notes or head over to marywagstaffcoachcom.